Nuking The Fridge Has Nuked The Fridge: Indiana Jones Could Have Survived After All

After Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the Internet tried really hard to make 'nuking the fridge' a thing. In the movie, Indy survives a nuclear test in the Nevada desert by hiding inside a refrigerator, and everybody immediately called bullshit. The 'nuking the fridge' thing was a short-lived phrase intended to take over for the long-in-the-tooth phrase 'jumped the shark.'

But not only did the phrase not take hold, it turns out Indy could have survived the blast after all! Web series Reel Physics took a look at the scene and spent some time crunching numbers and came to the conclusion that most of what happens on screen was plausible. It's important to note that the only reason Indy survived was because he was in a lead-lined fridge, and not because it saved him from radiation. The video shows how the weight of the fridge is what would have made his survival possible. We have to roll with that fridge a little bit because lead-lined fridges weren't a thing in the 1950s, but maybe the point of this fridge was to test how the food within withstood irradiation in a protected environment. That actually makes sense!

The only part of the scene that is straight up bullshit, it turns out, is the part where the flying fridge overtakes a car (and the blast wave). Even the initial blast wave, coming in at 5gs in this situation, would have been survivable. And so we have it forever more: nuking the fridge has nuked the fridge.

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While some may say he is the greatest critical mind of his time, Devin Faraci humbly insists he is only the voice of a generation. He has been writing about movies online since there was a 21st century.